Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/234

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BLOCK-BOOKS WITHOUT TEXT.

Santander says that the book bears all the marks of the highest antiquity. Holtrop says that there is one copy of this work in which the Latin text is translated, and explained by engraved lines in Flemish at the bottom of each cut. Guichard describes a series of engravings on wood, consisting of eight designs like those just described, with a manuscript text in Flemish. It is, without doubt, a Flemish book. Of the many extraordinary commentaries which have been made on the Lord's Prayer, this, surely, is the most singular perversion. The prayer which begins with a recognition of the brotherhood of mankind, which tells us to believe in the all-embracing love of the Father, which teaches lessons of dependence, forgiveness and protection, is made the text for a denunciation of Jews and Pagans, and for the teaching of doctrinal notions about the Eucharist.

THE BOOK OF KINGS.

In this book, two separate illustrations, with their explanatory text, are printed together on each page. The Book of Kings might, therefore, be classified among the block-books without separate pages of text, but it really has a text of unusual length for a book of this class. In other features, it resembles the block-books previously described; its twenty pages are printed on one side of the leaf; the illustrations face each other, and are in the customary brown ink. The designs are rudely drawn, and are as full of anachronisms in architecture as the illustrations of the Bible of the Poor, but the architecture most frequently shown is in the pointed Gothic style. The engraving is coarse; every object is cut in bold and heavy outline; tints and shading lines are timidly used, and always in a crude manner. It was obviously intended that the illustrations should be developed by painting or by stenciling. The letters are drawn and engraved with more care than the pictures, but they are irregular in size and form. One of the peculiarities of the lettering is the final cross given to the small letter t, a peculiarity which is frequently